Imran Upper 6 dinner, African style~

So yesterday our housemaster Mr Catto took the whole lot of us Upper 6’s out to an African restaurant knowned as, Out of Africa Restaurant in PJ. The place is co-owned by Dave (if I’m not mistaken) an acquaintance of Mr Catto. For all of us, this is our first time ever tasting African cuisine. I sat near to the Cattos that night, talked with the missus most of the time about food. I am no food critique but I have picked up a little bit on them since I spent most of my free time watching Top Chef.

For starters I had Ostrich Carpaccio. Asyiq was astounded when he learnt that carpaccio is actually a raw meat dish where the meat is thinly sliced and usually marinated with something to give it some flavor, served together with some vegetables. The meat was nice and juicy, not dry as I expected it to be, while the veggies were not that bad, the flavor on them was interesting, something like vinegar I think.

My main dish was Venison pie. I gotta tell you though, it really looked to me like ‘daging kurma’ stuffed into a pie, it even tasted like one! The thing I like most about this dish is the fact that the meat was so soft and tender, very well cooked. They were so good that I burnt my tongue because I ate it while it was still so hot.

Venison pie

As for dessert, initially I wanted to taste the Mousse swirl, unfortunate for me that was no longer available. So I finally resorted to ordering a lemon meringue (pronounced mu’rang). Mrs Catto told me it was a lemon cake, topped with a meringue which is a topping that she loves so much, made out of beaten egg whites. She said she had looked for a meringue in Malaysia for so long, but has yet to found one, maybe because it’s hard for the batter to set in due to the hot weather here. It was tasty, the balance between the sour and sweetness of the lemon cake was alright, but maybe the texture was not that good. Then I helped Asyiq finish his dessert, which was Malva pudding, in short, some sort of chocolate cake with ice-cream. The chocolaty taste was what hit me the most, it was very rich, guess maybe that’s why he had some trouble to finish it up.

Lemon meringue dessert

Finally before we left, the restaurant sang happy birthday for Tasnim and even brought him a cake, on the house! The waiters’ version of happy birthday song was very odd to us all, it sounded as if they just changed the lyrics of ‘a wimoweh…. In the jungle, the mighty jungle. The lion sleeps tonight’ song into a birthday song. Hahaha, vey funny! Guess that ought to be one heck of a birthday for Tasnim!

I leave the rest to you.......